The present invention relates to an ink jet printer and, more particularly, to an ink recirculating device useful for an ink jet printer.
A conventional ink jet printer includes a carriage carrying a nozzle, a pair of charging electrodes and a pair of deflection electrodes, and a beam gutter as disclosed in, for example, Japanese Laid Open No. 49-42241 published on Apr. 20, 1974.
The carriage is drive to to reciprocate along slidable shaft means in the lateral direction. Desired patterns are formed on a record receiving sheet by mean of ink drops dispersed from the nozzle. The residual of the ink drops not contributive to recording purposes is collected by the beam gutter and fed back to an ink reservoir through a collection pipe.
Conventionally the residual of the ink drops has been returned from the beam gutter to the ink reservoir by virtue of the difference in height between the beam gutter and the ink reservoir. Therefore, the collection pipe should be thick due to problems with high viscosity and surface tension of the ink used. Further, the ink reservoir must be positioned under the beam gutter to collect the residual. This ink collection system is disclosed in Takano et al U.S. Pat. No. 4,007,684, for example.
In the above-mentioned conventional ink collection system, an ink receiver is arranged under the beam gutter to accept collected ink from the beam gutter. The ink receiver should be extended so as to cover a travelling interval of the carriage. The collected ink dropping on the ink-receiver is liable to increase its viscosity due to the vaporization of a solvent in the ink. Dust is inevitably deposited on the ink receiver so that a filter for cleaning the ink to be used is damaged in a short time. Speedy acceleration of the carriage makes it impossible for the ink receiver to catch a certain amount of the ink. Such ink may contaminate the ink jet printer by its dispersion.